This webinar provides the basics of image processing for active fire detection. It demonstrates how to access the RUS Service and how to download, process, analyse and visualize the free data acquired by the Copernicus satellites. The ESA-SNAP Sentinel-1 Toolbox will be employed to demonstrate the methodology to map active wild fires.
Forest Fire
Definition
Wildfire, also called forest, bush or vegetation fire, can be described as any uncontrolled and non-prescribed combustion or burning of plants in a natural setting such as a forest, grassland, brush land or tundra, which consumes the natural fuels and spreads based on environmental conditions (e.g., wind, topography). Wildfire can be incited by human actions, such as land clearing, extreme drought or in rare cases by lightning (IRDR).
There are three conditions that need to be present in order for a wildfire to burn: fuel, oxygen, and a heat source. Fuel is any flammable material surrounding a fire, including trees, grasses, brush, even homes. The greater an area's fuel load, the more intense the fire. Air supplies the oxygen a fire needs to burn. Heat sources help spark the wildfire and bring fuel to temperatures hot enough to ignite. Lightning, burning campfires or cigarettes, hot winds, and even the sun can all provide sufficient heat to spark a wildfire (National Geographic).
Facts and figures
The Global Wildland Fire Network Bulletin published by the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) presents the most recent data regarding consequences of wildfire: in 2017, 36 fires in protected areas were recorded in 19 countries burning more than 196000 hectares worldwide.
Wildfire plays a mixed role for ecology and economy since some ecosystems depend on natural fires to maintaining their dynamics, biodiversity and productivity. However, every year, wildfires burn millions of hectares of forest woodlands and other vegetation, causing the loss of many human and animal lives and an immense economic damage, both in terms of resources destroyed and the costs of suppression. There are also impacts on society and the environment, such as damage to human health from smoke, loss of biological diversity, release of greenhouse gases, damage to recreational values and infrastructure (FAO).
Most fires are caused by people. The list of human motivations include land clearing and other agricultural activities, maintenance of grasslands for livestock management, extraction of non-wood forest products, industrial development, resettlement, hunting, negligence and arson. Only in very remote areas of Canada and the Russian Federation lightning is a major cause of fires (FAO).
There are three basic types of wildfires:
- Crown fires burn trees up their entire length to the top. These are the most intense and dangerous wildland fires.
- Surface fires burn only surface litter and duff. These are the easiest fires to put out and cause the least damage to the forest.
- Ground fires (sometimes called underground or subsurface fires) occur in deep accumulations of humus, peat and similar dead vegetation that become dry enough to burn. These fires move very slowly, but can become difficult to fully put out, or suppress (Government of Canada).
Further information
Related content
Evento
Data Source
Pleidas, TerraSar-X, SPOT and Elevation data available commercially from airbus, certain sample data sets at various locations available for free.
The GEOMAC Wildland Fire Support includes layers on: point-layer of past years fires, fire boundaries/ perimeter, current firest, satellite-based fire detection: MODIS VIIRS HMS, wildland-urban interface,
Vegetation-based fire indicators: expected number of fires per predictive service area: number of fires predicted (1000+ acres west, 500+ acres east) or the coming 7 days, with a probability estimate for exceeding the prediction.
The website: https://www.radiant.earth
Help and Tutorials: https://help.radiant.earth/
Demos & Use Cases: https://demos.radiant.earth/
NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is a program for archiving and distributing Earth science data from multiple missions to users.
Map Viewer that allows downloading and time series creation of meteosat products.
The Hazards Mapper home page is a base map of the world with darker shaded areas indicating higher population densities. Custom population estimates generated by the Hazards Mapper are provided by SEDAC’s Population Estimation Service (PES). Population and settlement data are based on SEDAC’s Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) and Gridded Population of the World, version 3 (GPWv3) data collections. GPWv3 provides a resolution of roughly 4 km (2.5 miles) at the equator. This population resolution will increase significantly when the updated version, GPWv4, is released in 2016. “Our new population layer will be at a resolution of 1 km (0.6 miles) at the equator, which will give higher precision for smaller areas,” says de Sherbinin.
Continuously updated data layers that can be overlaid on the base map are available from NASA’s EOSDIS, including data from SEDAC; NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE); and Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS)...., The default base map includes:
Red dots indicating fires and other hotspots detected over the past 48 hours by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument;
Colored circles indicating earthquakes over the past seven days from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program;
Icons indicating the location of individual dams, dam clusters, and nuclear power plants from SEDAC’s Global Reservoir and Dam and Population Exposure Estimates in Proximity to Nuclear Power Plants, Locations databases; and,
Colored polygons indicating tornado and flood warnings issued by NOAA (U.S. locations only).
Hazards and Population Mapper (HazPop) is a free app that enables users to easily display recent natural hazard data in relationship to population, major infrastructure, and satellite imagery. Hazards data include the location of active fires over the past 48 hours; earthquake alerts over the past seven days; and yesterday′s air pollution data measured from space. The app shows the location of major dams and nuclear power plants and provides more detailed information and imagery for these facilities where available. By drawing a circle around a point or area of interest on the map, users can obtain an estimate of the total population and land area enclosed within., Developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, HazPop combines data and map layers from various sources including NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) and Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and others using a variety of open Web mapping services. The custom population estimates are provided by the SEDAC Population Estimation Service (PES) based on SEDAC′s Gridded Population of the World, version 4 (GPWv4) data for 2015.
